Finally, Christ guarantees the church's perpetual victory. Jesus responded to Peter's public confession of faith with a bold promise of his own: "I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (v 18).
We know that the Roman Catholic Church interprets this verse as being a decree from Christ that someone from Peter's lineage will perpetually rule the church as its pope. If you'll read this verse carefully, however, you'll notice that Jesus clearly had a more substantial decree in mind.
The name "Peter" in Greek is petros, the masculine form of the word that means a "small stone" or a "tiny pebble." Yet the word rock used in this verse comes from the feminine form — petra — which refers to an entire slab of rock or even a mountain.
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Not far from where I live just east of Atlanta, Georgia, stands an enormous slab of solid rock called Stone Mountain. Its bare, gray face extends hundreds of feet above the ground and for two miles horizontally from beginning to end. It is the largest exposed mass of granite in North America.
Without a doubt it is what the Greek language would call a petra. Capital letters. Underlined twice. Gigantic rock.
But if you go to the base of that mountain, you can easily kick up all kinds of loose gravel that has found its way there by being dislodged from the much, much larger rock. Pick up one of these little stones, stare up at the mountain it came from, and you'll have a good sense of why the rock you're holding in your hand is not best described as a petra but as a petros — a tiny pebble.
Jesus said, "You are Peter — petros — [a little rock], but upon this petra — [this big rock, this brave confession of yours about who I am and what I came to do] — I will build my church."
Any doubt about who this petra really is can be easily answered with another Scripture, this time from 1 Corinthians 10. There Paul is speaking to the New Testament church about the children of Israel during their exodus from Egypt and their years of wandering in the wilderness. He reminds the early believers that these forefathers of theirs "all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:3-4).
The only man who is ever to be exalted in the church is its true leader, its true rock. And that Rock is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one able to crash the gates of hell, to conclude the reign of death, and to claim the final victory over the devil.
- Jesus alone, then, is the Lord of the church, and we are to obey him completely.
- He is the Leader of the church, and we are to follow him totally.
- He is the Lover of the church, and we should adore him supremely.
- He is the Life of the church, and we can know him personally.
The Founder of our church is Jesus Christ, and he is making our church a modern-day wonder.
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Used by permission of Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. From the book Crown Him King by James Merritt. Copyright 2003.